Watchmen watchtype

Mar 11 2009

The Week in Type

Later than usual, but it’s here. I’ve been devoting some considerable time to several iLT-related projects, so a little behind on posting here. I hope to tell you more about those projects in the near future; if I can get around the coding problems. OK, so let’s start with something fun:

An addictive and challenging font game, the Deep Font Challange:

Some of the samples are a little too small (well, that’s my excuse for not achieving the high score), but it is fun.

What does the Soprano’s logo and the Watchmen logotype have in common?

Read LetterCult’s interview with Corey Holms to discover the answer.

Berlintypes has some really wonderful Flickr sets, including photos of covers of Typografische Monatsblätter and Specimen books, and lots more:

Skin type. Ouch:

via @arroncupid.

Letterpress

Nice cards printed on coaster board (think beer mats) for Jeff Cerise:

Thanks, @jeremyjaymes.

Type links

Spiekermann on the Rupee (audio)
India seeks rupee status symbol
Bond book covers
Tips for using scripts
Creative uses for paragraph rules — InDesign
Wood type photos
French vocabulary shower curtain
Establishing a good relationship with your printer
RBtL design podcast, episode 5
50 Stunning Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials:

This must have taken an age to compile. The Periodic table of typefaces:

Web typography

Have seen the CSS text-shadow property abused a lot of late. Here’s an example of it used to good effect:

And the code:

text-shadow: #bcbcbc 0 1px 1px;

color: #171717;

Works best when the colour of the shadow contrasts with both the text colour and background colour. FireFox users will have to wait until 3.1 for text-shadow support. Thanks to all those on twitter for enlightening me.

Video type

FontShop did it with FF Trixie. I’m surprised more foundries/resellers aren’t taking advantage of video in promoting their fonts. Here’s another promo video for Agostina:

Some interesting work — especially if you’re into 3D type — from SerialCut:

Love this kind of experimentation. Take Univers, rotate it, model it, and you have Univers Revolved:

It never ceases to amaze me, what people do with type. More experimentation, please.
Thanks to Andy Sherman for the heads up.

Tipografia Paraguay (t’py) is a collective of designers interested in the development, study, and promotion of type and typography:

Only available in Spanish right now. Perhaps they’ll add Guaraní and English later?

Events

The TDC holds some great events, and really has me wishing I lived closer to NY. An evening with Ed Benguiat.

The Louvain and Roman Irish Types of the Irish Franciscans
March 2009 Thursday 12th March – 7.30 p.m.
Location: Dublin, Ireland [map]
By Dr. Dermot McGuinne

… an illustrated account of the 17th century printing types prepared for use in the Irish language publications of the early Irish Franciscans working in exile in Europe and their influence on later designs.

Robothon 2009 has passed, but there’s some good coverage over at youshouldliketypetoo.com:

Recognise anyone?

Featured face

Router by Jeremy Mickel, and available only at Village:

And Village is now on Twitter: @vllg

New type

Jeanne Moderno from Steve Mehallo. An interesting blend of Bodoni italic, two spoons of Fat Face, and a dash of something else:

I’ve also used Jeanne Moderno to set this article’s masthead.

Muscle from TypeTrust:

Download the Muscle PDF specimen.

Opal from Hannes von Döhren, and available from Linotype:

Like those gargantuanly exaggerated ink-traps. At display sizes it’s a nice feature, though I’m not sure about them when it comes to extended text. Interesting in that it comes with a Script — could be used as an alternative to the italic (though for shorter stretches of text, I think).

The woefully inadequate PDF specimen is here. Come on Linotype! Nice type deserves a nice specimen.

Euroglory 2 from Stefan Hattenbach:

Desktop wallpaper

Something to brighten up your desktop. A wallpaper set in Ale Paul’s beautiful Kewl Script:

1024 by 640 & 1920 by 1200.

And finally …

Hello to the host of new iLT followers on twitter. And, thanks for reading. Have an especially great week.

Nico Sala

What typeface did Aoyama use for her little piece? I really like it

Mar 11, 2009
Kari Pätilä

The text-shadow-property was an absolute must with light text on a dark background, but Safari 4 did something to mess that up.

I’ve been waiting for Firefox 3.1 mainly because of box-shadow, though.

Let me know if you need any help with those coding problems.

Mar 11, 2009
Davide

Great way to end my day :-)

Mar 11, 2009
Able Parris

Wow, Aoyama Hina is amazing!

Oh, and meant to tell you this a while back. Glad to see ffffound let you have an account!

Mar 11, 2009
Ross

Univers Revolved reminds me of the bureau stage of Obsidian. The first area you see has signs featuring a similar technique and a tiny mariachi plays along with an alphabet book that animates each letter.

Great game.

http://is.gd/mVTE http://is.gd/mVTO

Mar 11, 2009
Charles

What is this “coaster board” stuff? Never heard of it. AFAIK this paper is more commonly known as oaktag.

Mar 11, 2009
johno

Nico
I think it’s handwritten, though I’ll ask her.

Kari
I think I’m going to need your help. Expect an email soon. Thanks.

Davide
Thanks!

Able
It is isn’t it. Can’t imagine how long these pieces must take her. Would be great to see these incorporated into a collage. Did you see Jonathan Hoefler’s post with the piece by Eduardo Recife? Fantastic.

Mar 11, 2009
johno

Charles
I always thought oaktag was more heavy duty than coaster board.

Mar 11, 2009
Bob Marchman

I do love the periodic table of typefaces, but I’m irked by the lack of Centaur. I know they pulled the typefaces from several lists, and those don’t include Centaur either. Sorry, but I can’t take a list of the top 100 typefaces of all time seriously if Centaur isn’t on it (and in the top 10 at that). Bruce Rogers deserves better from you young whippersnappers. ;-)

I am officially an elitist font snob.

…and damn proud of it!

BTW – my goal is to do the Font Licensing podcast within the next week. I had some life happen to me and it had to put it on hold. Again, thanks for the previous name drop.

—Bob

Mar 11, 2009
Alec

Univers Revolved is all coolness. I’m surprised (at first take, and for no good reason) that there were no duplicate glyph forms after the 3D processing.

Mar 11, 2009
Josef

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’m irked by the letter c in the Watchmen logo.

Euroglory looks good. :) Thanks for the post, lots of nice stuff.

Mar 11, 2009
jsheldon

Thanks for the tip about the text shadow. It’s a nice subtle touch when used right.

Aoyama Hina’s work is just mind boggling!

Mar 11, 2009
Tom

The code for this posting is missing the ending brace before the object tag, which is messing up some feed readers. Just thought I’d let you know.

Mar 11, 2009
johno

Tom
Many thanks for pointing that out. Should be fixed now. Have also re-synched the feed.

Mar 11, 2009
eric

Really great movie!

Mar 11, 2009
mehallo

I didn’t know Ed Benguiat was really Super Fly. I’m going to have to watch that movie again …

Although you know, I could actually see him dressed up in the Pink/Purple trench coat and driving that waayy cool caddie. That would be sooooo fly! ;)

THX for the post on Moderno, love seeing it as the masthead. :)

Mar 11, 2009
Martin N

Univers Revolved is also very similar to HC Ericson’s Corpus/ABCHCE – http://www.steneby.se/showpage.asp?PID=220211840
http://www.designonline.se/Books/sek1/Books/7022&Show=

Mar 12, 2009
Ryan Ragsdale

I loved the Corey Holms article… thanks!

Mar 12, 2009
Suzanne

Universe Revolved - what a cool idea! Wonder how a serif font would look treated this way.
Love Router too, thanks for a great post!

Mar 12, 2009
Kozue

I really love to see the letter you put, even I can’t understand these meanings…

Mar 13, 2009
Jack

Aoyama, i bow to you!

Mar 13, 2009
Mikko

Wow those “beer mats” are beautiful! Thank you for the great post again. Always cheers up.

Mar 13, 2009
nerdski

Great stuff this week. That skin type is something else. Router is quite nice, I’m going to have to pick that one up.

Mar 13, 2009
Stefan Hattenbach

John, Thanks for mentioning Euroglory and Josef, thanks for liking it!
PS. Robothon was a great pleasure and the exhibition well worth to watch.

cheers

Mar 13, 2009
Christopher A.

OH! I would love to get my hands on a copy of The Periodic table of typefaces!!

Mar 13, 2009
Antonea

Thanks for the link to my Establishing A Positive Relationship With Your Printer post! Also, awesome typography sites! I found a couple new people to follow on twitter and some great new blogs to subscribe to!

Mar 13, 2009
Web Design

Very interesting list. Work of Ayoma Hina is really amazing. Router is also good.

Mar 13, 2009
Creative Agency Manchester

Loving the periodic table and serial cut. Keep up the good posts.

Mar 16, 2009
Roger

Great design and looks

Mar 20, 2009
Nate at Plasticprinters

Awesome post! Man, that hand thing… ooooof. As a web designer the apple text shadow thing is really cool. I haven’t used that before myself… Hopefully I do not become another ABUSER!!

Nate

Mar 25, 2009
LaurenMarie - Creative Curio

Ok, so who are we supposed to recognize in that Robothon 2009 pic?

The Univers Revolved is interesting! I wonder how difficult it would be to figure out which shapes are which letters without the cut away…

And Josef, you’re not the only one annoyed by the C in Watchmen. I am too; it feels cut short, too thin, though it is MUCH better than the original graphic novel version (the article Johno mentioned explains that bit).

Mar 27, 2009